


It's Only Forever; Not Long At All

by Lilymoncat



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Ascension, Disjointed Imagery, Gen, The Author Regrets Nothing, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Warning: Sheogorath, battle of gods, broken hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 16:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17267345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilymoncat/pseuds/Lilymoncat
Summary: He is a Prisoner no more, or perhaps He is and the prison is His own making.





	It's Only Forever; Not Long At All

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Normal Horoscopes on Tumblr.
> 
>  **Leo** : Take it. Its yours. You won this. Too many voices telling you yes yes yes. Only the coldest and loneliest part of yourself resists. The part of you that will wait.

There are screams in His head and sparks through His hair. The taste of apples and half solid amber in His mouth, stattico operas in the movement of His blood. He ducks the sword swung by the one before Him, that petty pitiful pellucid person who just doesn’t understand. There is no Order but the one He makes, and even then there will always be ones who are literally made incapable of following it. Prisoners of their own freedom, Order shattered and reformed in their wake. He was one such, just a little while ago. Now His mind is frayed and unraveled and knit back together with the bones of tiny star creatures and the shells of giant leviathans. A prisoner no more, or perhaps the prison is His own choosing.

He dances, lithe and broken and barefoot on blade strewn floor, barely noticing that one footstep is outlined in the red blood of mortality, the next in the gold ichor of divinity. Apples and Amber and His arrows impact with wailing screams upon crystal carapace, crack it and gouge it and shatter it. Once they were one and the same, but now He looks out through His own eyes and speaks with His own mouth, no longer needs worry about the inevitable return to what He once was. He goes from playfulness to rampaging screaming fury in a breath, bow of dreugh bones and spriggan sinew dropped in favor of His bare hands and lightning magic. Crystal conducts and His aim is sloppy, He damages Himself as much as His enemy, more red and gold seeping from Him until both the colors bleed at once.

He whirls Himself away from His opponent again, two staffs materializing in His hands. His Staff of Office points at the kryos knights moving to back their Lord up, paralyzing them while the other turns them to coins or baliwogs or sweetrolls. He laughs and screams in the same breath, and for a moment He gives way to who he was, that broken mortal who’d been foolish enough to love one meant to be a God’s Skin. He weeps, tears of hemlock and curare that would kill him if he was still truly what he had been. Then He screams again, dropping the staffs to tear at His hair before He rolls away from a swing, shredding His armor and bleeding fingers closing about His bow. A final shot and crystal shatters, His enemy falls at last. He listens with half an ear to the remnants of His enemy speaking to Him, overwhelmed by the voices in His head. So many, too many, telling Him yes yes yes, take it, take the Mantle. It’s His, He’s _earned_ it. Only a very small part, cold and lonely and bereft and Not-Him, still resists and waits.

“Fare thee well, Sheogorath, Prince of Madness.”

As Jyggalag departs the Isles a final time, the Champion who has become Sheogorath screams His triumph to the skies. Victory howl becomes choking sobs, and He drops to the ground, a puppet with His strings cut, unsure of why He weeps at all.


End file.
